After locking up in rings overseas and rolling backstage between worked wrestling matches, Bobby Lashley (6-1) has found an advocate in Josh Barnett (30-5).

The two recently paired up in Barnett’s backyard of Irvine, Calif. After an intense training weekend, Lashley, who hopes to return to the cage in the fall, has seen the benefit of working with the Strikeforce heavyweight and hopes to make it a regular thing.

“I want to show people that I’ve evolved a little bit,” he told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).

The Denver-based fighter and sometime professional wrestler met Barnett while working for the Japanese “pro wrestling” promotion Inoki Genome Federation (IGF), and the two quickly struck up a friendship.

“The pro wrestling world is a pretty solidly knit group,” Barnett said. “It’s a little bit different from MMA in that there is a certain code of ethics. Even people that really don’t want to obey them will still go to at least the most trivial lengths to uphold it. So you get to know each other pretty well.”

Of course, Barnett immediately felt Lashley’s talent on the mat and quickly realized he’d make a great training partner. He’d also watched the heavyweight’s meteoric rise – and subsequent fall – in MMA and thought he could help.

Lashley, as Barnett saw it, was committing the rookie mistake of not wisely using energy in his fights and suffering the effects. A loss to Chad Griggs this past August made that clear to him, not to mention the rest of the world.

“He should be beating most of these guys in two rounds,” Barnett said. “So I think it’s just a lost link in the chain.”

It took a year of wrestling side-by-side for Lashley to get around to buying a plane ticket. With several businesses to run, wrestling matches, training sessions and three kids, he couldn’t just pick up and leave. Also considering a move to light heavyweight, he wasn’t quite sure what direction his career would take.

Lashley knew, however, that he needed to improve his skills in MMA. After such a public fall, he might not get another opportunity to convince fans that he was more than just a gimmick – a pro wrestler scouted more for his imposing looks than actual skill.

And with a highly publicized withdrawal from a fight with Eddie Sanchez at Titan Fighting Championships 19 – a bout that Lashley said was never officially booked – his reputation could hinge on an impressive return.

“It’s good for me to pull back a little bit,” Lashley said. “I know I jumped out there a little too fast and a little too hot.

“I’ve never been in a training camp where I have three months to prepare for a fight. All my training camps have been that I jump over here for two weeks, then I come home, then I jump over here for two weeks, and I spend a month or … two months tops on dialing myself in.”

From the first training session, Lashley and Barnett knew it was a good fit.

“We would start out drilling on our feet,” Lashley said. “Of course, that was my strong suit, so we’d get a lot of drill work in and then go live with takedowns and takedowns to submissions. That was good for me because I would get him with a takedown but he would show me different things on the ground. We drilled a bunch of different series of submissions, and that’s where he took over. It was great.”

Barnett, on the other hand, got to work with a world-class heavyweight wrestler. Before his notoriety as a professional wrestler, Lashley was a decorated collegian whose Olympic aspirations ended when he injured his knee while a witness to a 2003 bank robbery. His skills, however, didn’t go anywhere.

That could come in handy for Barnett’s next fight, a meeting with Russian Sergei Kharitonov in the semifinals of the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix, to say nothing of a meeting with Antonio Silva or Daniel Cormier if he makes it to the finals.

“Holy moly, man, the guy’s takedowns are incredible,” Barnett said. “It’s not just about taking one shot on a guy. He commits, he follows through. He’s got a lot behind him on the mat.

“It’s hard to stay on your feet with a guy like that. Don’t get me wrong, I made him work for it, trust me. But that’s exactly the kind of reason I want him out here. I don’t have wrestlers to his level very often.”

Getting Lashley to Irvine on a consistent basis, though, is not an easy task. He said he plans to bring his family on future trips. When his next booking comes, he’ll put in a full training camp, not one that’s assembled piecemeal.

Now, it’s just a matter of getting the next fight and following through.

“We’ll see how it really goes,” Barnett said. “He’s not just some floating-in-the-wind kind of guy. He has quite a few commitments in his non-fight related life. It’s not as easy as if it was some 22-year-old kid with nothing holding him down. But I think that we can make something work out that will be a really beneficial situation for him.”

It only took one weekend of dedicated work for Lashley to see that. The process, however, is far from over.

When he does return, though, Lashley wants fans to know that he’s not just a hulking wrestler.

“I’m hoping I can take something in late September or early October, and in that fight, I’d like to show people something different than what I’ve always showed them,” Lashley said. “I’m not going to show them that I can take someone down and ground and pound them. Maybe it will be a submission. Maybe it’s going to be standing with someone.”
(Pictured: Bobby Lashley and Josh Barnett)

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